The Maltese Falcon is as hardboiled as it gets

If there is a such a thing as a perfectly-written crime novel, you'd be hard pressed to find a more worthy recipient than The Maltese Falcon. More than eight decades after its original release, in 1930, the book remains a true classic in the genre of hardboiled crime fiction.

Written by Dashiell Hammett, The Maltese Falcon is a well-plotted, well-written detective story that has been enjoyed by generations of readers, and inspired generations of writers as well. The book has been adapted twice for the big screen, most notably a 1941 film noir, starring Humphrey Bogart and Peter Lorre. It has spawned several TV parodies as well.

There are so many aspects of The Maltese Falcon that make this a delightful read. The precise use of language, the clever plotting, the subtle humour, the dingy San Francisco streets of the '20s and the lowly band of characters all make this a delightful and entertaining story, which stays with you long after you've finished reading it.

The main protagonist is Sam Spade, a cynical, cigarette-rolling private detective whose work partner, Miles Archer, has just been murdered. Some believe that Sam might have had a hand in Archer's death because of his affair with Archer's wife, Iva. The police question Spade about his potential involvement in the murder and believe him to be a suspect.

The death of Spade's partner triggers a series of events involving an amusing cast of characters, some of whom are intent on obtaining a rare and priceless figurine/bird. Among those wanting to find this bird are Brigid O'Shaughnessy, an attractive and duplicitous blond who tries to win the affections of Spade; and Casper Gutman, a heavy-set and charismatic art collector who has been trying to acquire the bird for 17 years.

Readers must remember that Hammett wrote this novel in the 1920s, when social attitudes about gender equality were much different than they are today. In The Maltese Falcon, Spade views women as little more than sex objects, and his actions towards them are mistrustful and misogynistic, as illustrated in this scene in which O'Shaughnessy is literally throwing herself at Spade:

Their faces were a few inches apart. Spade took her face between his hands and he kissed her mouth roughly and contemptuously. Then he sat back and said: 'I'll think it over." His face was hard and furious.

At many times while reading The Maltese Falcon, I felt myself cringe at scenes like this one. I know Hammett was writing for a different audience, but that doesn't make Spades' demeaning attitudes and actions towards women any more palatable. Indeed, they don't call this hard-boiled fiction for nothing.

When it comes to describing his characters, Hammett pulls no punches and has no qualms about calling a spade a spade (pun intended). Here is the author's no-holds-barred description of Gutman when we first meet this character:

The fat man was flabbily fat with bulbous pink cheeks and lips and chins and neck, with a great soft egg of a belly that was all his torso, and pendant cones for arms and legs. As he advanced to meet Spade all his bulbs rose and shook and fell separately with each step, in the manner of clustered soap-bubbles not yet released from the pipe through which they had been blown.

Hammett rarely misses an opportunity to call attention to Gutman's obesity, frequently referring to him as "the fat man." In Hammett's hands, such descriptions serve both as comic relief and the advancement of plot. Gutman remains a sly and calculating character in appearance, mannerisms and speech, and you know that he'll say and do anything to win the bird. That's part of what makes him so likeable and endearing.

The story advances with a steady and sometimes quickened pace, and with each chapter, readers feel closer to discovering the true motivations of the characters and the mystery of the rare figurine. Hammett does an exceptional job tossing all of the plot twists into the air, juggling them for our amusement, and making sense of them at the end.

There is a reason why The Maltese Falcon is still deemed such a pioneering work of fiction, decades after its original publication. For those who haven't had read it, you're missing a unique reading experience. 

An Interview with novelist, Anne Tyler

Eleanor Wachtel recently interviewed Pulitzer Prize winning author, Anne Tyler, on the CBC's Writers & Company. I've read several of Tyler's novels and enjoyed them thoroughly, although I'd never heard the author interviewed before. Over the course of Tyler's career, she has granted few interviews, and so this was a rare treat.

Tyler spoke about her novel, A Spool of Blue Thread, and about some of her earlier works, such as Celestial Navigation and Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant (Tyler's 1985 novel, The Accidental Tourist, was a popular film starring William Hurt). A recurring theme of families appears throughout Tyler's work. What intrigues her about families is their propensity for conflict and drama and how they usually end up staying together.

I enjoyed the part where Tyler spoke about her upbringing in a Quaker household in Raleigh, North Carolina. She didn't enjoy being a child (in fact she hated it) because she wasn't in control of her life. She particularly disliked always being put into a car and driven somewhere and never knowing where she was going (most children can relate).

I would have liked to hear Tyler discuss her 1995 novel, Ladder of Years, one of my favourites. Ladder of Years tells the story of woman who deserts her family while they are on vacation, for no apparent reason. Most of the novel concerns itself with the narrator trying understand herself and find a purpose to her life aside from being a wife and raising children. As with many of Tyler's novels, the actual progression of events in this story is rather slow-moving and mundane, but the complexity and understanding that Tyler brings to her characters makes for a powerful narrative indeed.

All in all, this was a fascinating interview with one of the world's most talented - and one of my favourite - novelists. Here is the link to that interview: Writers & Company.

Past and present collide in The Lighthouse by P.D. James

The Lighthouse

A novel by P.D. James

Published by Alfred A. Knopf Canada, 2005

On a privately-owned island off the coast of Cornwall, England, a man's body is discovered hanging from a lighthouse railing. Was it murder? A suicide? An accident? That's what Commander Adam Dalgliesh and his team at New Scotland Yard must determine in this slow-paced and carefully-plotted crime novel by P.D. James.

As a straight-up whodunnit, The Lighthouse is a solid work of fiction by one of the world's renowned crime novelists. James (1920 - 2014) methodically builds suspense and moves the action forward with studied calmness and surgical-like precision.

At first glance, Combe Island appears haunting and mysterious, as Dalgliesh and his colleagues arrive by helicopter to investigate the death of Nathan Oliver, a popular novelist and infrequent resident of the island who has come here for rest and relaxation. James writes:

"The middle of the island was a multicoloured scrubland with clutches of bushes and a few copses of spindly trees crossed by track so faint that they looked like the spoor of animals. The island did indeed look inviolate; no beaches, no receding lace of foam. The cliffs were taller and more impressive in the north-west where a spur of jagged rocks running out to the sea like broken teeth rose from a turmoil of crashing waves."

The island serves as a retreat for people who want a break from the pressures of everyday life. But the island also has a murky past, and as the story unfolds, James reveals the various histories and relationships among the main players (inhabitants and visitors alike), dropping clues and sprinkling details in a gradual building of suspense. It's up to Dalgliesh to discover how the island's history connects with the death of Nathan Oliver.

As with all good crime fiction, James introduces several characters who serve as possible suspects. There's bad blood between Oliver and a prominent animal researcher (Mark Yelland), who happens to be visiting the island when Oliver's death occurs; there's the boyfriend of Oliver's daughter whose life would be happier with Oliver out of the picture; and a shadowy figure named Jago, a resident boatman who bears a decades-long grievance involving Oliver's father.

The story unfolds with systematic thoroughness. But Dalgliesh's ability to lead the investigation is compromised when he is suddenly sidelined with a serious illness, and so the role of lead detective falls to his young colleague, Detective Inspector Kate Miskin. Can Miskin overcome her own fears and insecurities and solve the case before the local authorities are called in? The decisions she makes now will have a bearing on her career with Scotland Yard. Miskin and her colleague, Sergeant Francis Benton-Smith race against the clock for answers before the island guests start leaving and outside help steps in.

James builds the story to a fairly satisfying conclusion, although I was somewhat surprised at how abruptly the disparate pieces of this mystery are tidily pieced together within a few paragraphs. I haven't read enough P. D. James to know if this kind rapid-fire resolution is consistent in her fiction.

Nonetheless, the writing, the characterization, the plot twists and the slow deliberate pacing of The Lighthouse made for a satisfying read, and together these ingredients have whetted my appetite for more of P. D. James's fiction featuring Adam Dalgliesh.

Exposing the wizards of Wall Street

The Big Short, Inside the Doomsday Machine

By Michael Lewis

Published by W.W. Norton & Company, 2010

In The Big Short, Michael Lewis (Moneyball, Liar's Poker) takes readers behind the scenes at America's major banks and brokerage houses to explain the litany of events that triggered the global financial crisis of 2008. It's not a pretty picture.

In as much as this book is about high-risk mortgages and complex financial products, and the obliteration of trillions (with a 'T') in market capital, it also explores an interesting David versus Goliath tale where a few clever Davids manage to outsmart the most influential (and wealthiest) Goliaths in the U.S. financial industry with savvy insights and shrewd investing.

In a nutshell, here's what happened: In 2005, U.S. banks made it easy for people with poor credit to secure mortgages that they couldn't afford. Many of these mortgages were sold with teaser interest rates, which would automatically double or more within two years, which put them at a higher risk than traditional mortgages. These high-risk mortgages were packaged and sold as bonds to investors for quick profits with the belief that housing prices would continue to rise forever, and the rating agencies blessed these bonds with Triple-A rating status (Triple-A status made them appear as sound investments).

Few in the financial/investment community saw the potential for large-scale default on these high-risk mortgages. One of the investors who did was Michael Burry, who managed a hedge fund called Scion Capital. He tried to warn the investment community, regulators and the public that a large percentage of these high-risk mortgages would default, based on his reading of the prospectuses. But nobody listened. So, through his hedge fund, Burry bet against the subprime mortgage market by buying millions' worth of subprime mortgage credit default swaps (insurance contracts).  These mortgage default swaps eventually netted Burry and his investors over $700 million.

In the film Wizard of Oz, there is a scene near the end of the movie when Dorothy and her friends finally get to see the elusive Wizard, and they realize that he's no wizard at all, just an ordinary man pretending to be a Wizard. That scene kept popping into my head as I read The Big Short. The presidents of big banks, brokerage houses and regulatory agencies (the so-called wizards of Wall Street) were supposed to be wise and all-knowing arbiters of finance. They were supposed to be attuned to market trends and know all about evaluating risk. They should have known that the subprime mortgage business model was unsustainable and that their businesses were seriously at risk. But they were just as short-sighted and fallible as anybody else.

What Lewis details in The Big Short is events surrounding the financial collapse, including the buyers and sellers of these convoluted financial products who foresaw the potential for damage and who and bet against the subprime mortgage bonds. Throughout the story, readers are rooting for the underdogs (small hedge funds / managers who nobody took seriously), if only because of their clarity of vision and their willingness to stick to their convictions.

The Big Short adopts exactly the right darkly comic tone for the telling of this sad chapter in America's history. Lewis populates this story with several key figures in the mortgage crisis and sets the stage for the eventual collapse of many large banks and resulting government bailouts. For me, The Big Short was an extremely entertaining read, inasmuch as bonds, derivatives and credit default swaps can be made entertaining. The book should be on the syllabus at any college or university that teaches courses on business and finance. 

The beauty of hindsight is that it provides answers that are all too obvious after the fact, and if this book allows for even a smidgeon of common sense to prevail on Wall Street, it will more than have served its purpose. 

The Time Of Our Lives

An old friend passed away recently. He was 59. I didn't know that he'd been ill, but that's not surprising since we had been out of touch for 20 years.

Rob and I (along with our brothers) spent six or seven years hanging out together in our teens. We rode motorbikes, water-skied and attended rock concerts. I remember racing our skidoos over frozen ponds and rivers and thinking the good times would never end. Given the reckless and crazy things we did, it's a wonder we survived.

If you had told me in my teens that I would go almost my entire adult life without having any contact with Rob, I would never had believed it. When you have friends in your youth, you just assume that you will remain friends forever.

When I was 25, I moved to England and when I returned home to Toronto a year later, Rob had moved to Alberta.  Over the next decade, Rob and I exchanged a few letters and phone calls. I last saw Rob at an Eagles concert in Toronto in 1994. As the months and years passed, careers and families exerted their pull and we drifted apart.

This got me thinking about what keeps friendships together.  It's caring and effort, of course. It's making time when deadlines and responsibilities loom. I wanted to visit Rob on several occasions but I never did. We only lived an hour apart and yet neither of us made the effort. What a shame. 

Rob was a smart guy with a razor-sharp wit. Many of his one-liners still echo inside my head, more than 30 years after he uttered them. He was someone whose opinions and worldview I found fascinating, intriguing, sometimes infuriating, but he remained true to himself. I always respected that about him.

Rob had a loving wife and five beautiful children. He was much admired at work and respected in his community. I'd like to think that his adult years as a husband and a father were happy and fulfilled, and I have no reason to think otherwise.

Over the years, I've often become nostalgic about our coming-of-age years, and I'm thankful for the time that Rob and I spent together. Those carefree years were precious and they're worth holding onto. Memories sustain us as we get older and provide a place of comfort and solace; but memories are fickle, too. I am often reminded of incidents in my past that I'd totally forgotten about, and I tell stories that others have forgotten. It's interesting how we embellish our personal narratives like a painter, dabbing details here and there, and erasing parts that don't belong.

Back in the 1970s, long before mobile phones and the Internet, long before careers and families, Rob and I (and our brothers) spent some unforgettable years roaming the trails and waterways at our cottages, discovering who we were. We didn't know then how those experiences would shape us and how they would ripen with age. Strange how (with the benefit of hindsight) those so-called misspent years wound up becoming among the best years of our lives.

In the film Stand By Me, there's a line typed by the narrator (played by Richard Dreyfuss) looking back at his younger self. He types, "I never had any friends later on like the ones I had when I was twelve. Jesus, does anyone?"

I'd like to think that Rob occasionally looked back on those glorious afternoons that we spent cruising along the lake with the wind in our faces; the autumn evenings reciting passages from Monty Python and the Holy Grail; and the endless hours riding dirt bikes through the forests. Ah, what times we had, what joy: I'd like to think that some of those memories left a mark and provided reasons for Rob to smile.

They continue to give me reasons to smile and I'll never forget them. 

Are we ready for a fully automated future?

The Glass Cage, Automation and Us

By Nicholas Carr

Published by W.W. Norton & Company, 2014

Many writers and thinkers today (i.e., Clive Thompson) extol the wonders of our increasingly computerized and automated world. Others recognize the benefits of automation but sound a more cautious note about what all this technology is doing to us.

Nicholas Carr falls into the latter camp. In his latest book, The Glass Cage, Automation and Us, Carr presents a convincing argument about the effects of too much reliance on technology - in particular computers - in our lives. He concludes that notwithstanding the efficient, time-saving and dazzling features of these new technologies, most of us remain ambivalent about them.

The central thesis in The Glass Cage is how our reliance on automation has diminished our cognitive abilities to solve problems and think creatively. He makes the case that mastering a skill (flying a plane, designing a building, diagnosing an injury), requires years of practice and that learned skills can easily erode over time if not used regularly. As Carr explains:

"While we carry out a task or a job on our own, we seem to use different mental processes than when we rely on the aid of a computer. When software reduces our engagement with our work, and in particular when it pushes us into a more passive role as observer or monitor, we circumvent the deep cognitive processing...and we hamper our ability to gain the kind of rich, real-world knowledge that leads to know-how."

This over-reliance on computers and automation had led to serious diminishment of skills at work and at play. Carr examines airline pilots, cruise ship captains, architects, Inuit hunters, Wall Street traders, healthcare workers and lawyers, whose professions have been seriously impacted by technology in recent decades, and not always for the better.

Some professionals have recognized this cognitive deficiency and have taken steps to address it. For example, architects utilize CAD design software for creating models and renderings of buildings, and experts feel that an over-dependency on that software hinders the creative process. In an effort to achieve greater creativity and explore new thought processes, some architects now use free-hand drawings to sketch out ideas before inputting their work into a computer. They feel that they are more engaged with their work when they create by freehand as opposed to using a computer.

The Glass Cage also provides a historical timeline about the rise of automation in the workplace, starting with the mechanization of textile mills and factories in the England in the early 19th century to the automated assembly lines at the Ford Motor Company in the mid-1940s, to the computer-aided airplanes, automobiles and electronic record keeping at hospitals today. The march of technology in these areas has not been without criticism, including fear of job losses and loss of control over one's life.

But the looming question Carr asks is what are we losing in the process of automating our lives. Is speed, efficiency and convenience a defensible trade-off for a reduced capacity to think creatively and critically? Are we ready for pilot-less airplanes and autonomous cars? Do quicker computer programs and more idleness lead to fuller or emptier lives?

These are huge questions that artists, educators, professionals, business leaders, politicians and citizens will grapple with in the years and decades ahead. The Glass Cage is not an anti-technology diatribe - it merely outlines a set of poignant facts and case studies of how increased computing power and automation are impacting our lives.

For those concerned about mastering a skill and the ability to think clearly, and those wondering where all this technology is taking us, this is a book for you. 

Bryson uncovers a world of wonders inside the home

At Home, by Bill Bryson

Published by Anchor Canada, a division of Random House Canada Limited, 2010

Bill Bryson is an author of immense curiosity, a characteristic that serves him well as a non-fiction writer who tackles diverse topics that include travelogues (In A Sunburned Country), outdoor adventures (A Walk In The Woods) and science exploration (A Short History of Nearly Everything).

In At Home, Bryson focuses that curiosity on the house that he and his wife occupy, a former church of England rectory in Norfolk, England. As Bryson points out in his introduction, "Houses are amazingly complex repositories...whatever happens in the world - whatever is discovered or created or bitterly fought over - eventually ends up, in one way or another, in your house."

In this exhaustively-researched book, Bryson takes readers on a sweeping and amusing tour through his house, devoting entire chapters to the history of the bedroom, the bathroom, the study, the nursery, and so on. His exacting eye for detail and talent for summarizing trends, ideas and events makes At Home a thoroughly entertaining read.

In the chapter on Gardening, for instance, Bryson describes how the pleasant pastime we know today as planting geraniums and pruning roses can be traced back to the mid-nineteenth century. In 1841, a book entitled Practical Instructions in Gardening For Ladies was published, which encouraged "women of elevated class to get their hands dirty and even to take on a faint glow of perspiration."

Bryson writes:

"The value of Gardening for Ladies wasn't what it contained so much as what it represented: permission to go outside and do something. It came at exactly the right moment to catch the nation's fancy. In 1841, middle-class women everywhere were bored out of their skulls by the rigidities of life and grateful for any suggestion of diversion."

Many times I found myself awed by the obscure people of history who played pivotal roles in the advancement of western thought and civilization, such as the American educator, George Bissell who, in 1853, discovered by accident that oil could serve as an illuminant - a discovery that precipitated the rise of the oil industry; an illiterate weaver in England named James Hargreaves who invented the spinning jenny in 1764; and Reverend Edmund Cartwright, who (after a chance conversation) designed the power loom in 1785, a discovery that contributed to the start of the Industrial Revolution and impacted Britain's financial fortunes for decades.  

At Home is as much as history lesson as it is a meticulous exploration of ideas, customs, superstitions and bric-à-brac that might be found inside anybody's home. Whether it's tracing the history of bizarre fashions (male wigs) or food trends (salt and pepper) through the centuries, Bryson's takes an otherwise mundane subject and makes it relevant and endlessly fascinating.

For Bryson fans, At Home is everything you've come to expect from this talented author, a far-ranging curiosity, a passion for exploring the randomness and quirkiness of life, and an informal writing style that blends charm, empathy and humour. At the end of the day, this is a book I'm more than happy to recommend.